Apple Store, Upper West Side

1981 Broadway, New York, NY. Open. Spacious. Expansive. What a beautiful site. 8500 square feet of space enclosed in glass and stone. The stones are 45 feet tall and 30 feet deep. The glass is 75 feet wide. The Upper West Side Apple Store joins about 325 other stores worldwide. It has the most demo units than any other Apple Store in the world. The Genius Bar and the store’s personal training space is underground and also the largest, able to handle 100 customers. Opens November 14, 2009 at 10am EST.

Apple’s underground Manhattan store opened 7 years ago. The first Apple Store opened in May 2001 right when Gateway decided that retail stores weren’t it. The original goal was to build an Apple Store within driving distance to 85% of US consumers. In 2009 Apple built more international stores than ones in the US and from now on the company plans to open at least one new Apple Store in a new country every year. Apple realized its Apple Stores were too small so all of its stores will be at least “three tables wide” going forward.

More than 170 million people have visited an Apple Store in 2009 so far. In Q309 Apple Stores generated US$1.87 billion in revenues. YTD: $6.6 billion, just from its stores. Apple Stores have generated more than 18% of total revenues this year. Average sales per store? $26 million. That doesn’t sound like a lot. Best Buy beats that number and so does Target and Macy’s. But when you change the metric to revenues per square feet, Apple’s $4300 is almost five times that of Best Buy ($872). Tiffany’s is even second fiddle to Apple.

Want a job at an Apple Store? Wait in line: a line that’s 100,000 long. That’s how many applications are on file for Apple Store positions. 10,000 applications were submitted just for the Upper West Side location! Of that huge number only 2,500 were interviewed and just 200 hired.